My mind, like rusted gears, was not moving well. It hadn’t been really since my 1st pregnancy 8 years ago. There are few things that dumb us down as much as pregnancy and children! Hormone changes, lack of sleep, fluctuating from 145-200-145 pounds three times, and then the subsequent growing beloveds around me to contribute to mental dissociation. Simple sensory overload from talking, yelling, crying, petitioning, inquiring kids factors in. You may read more about sensory issues here.
Daily writing, like a staunch governess, found my brain under cobwebs, bug carcasses, and musty stench. (Hello old friend! There you are!) This helps to explain the joy gripping my hand, like girlfriends on the playground, when I sit down to write! The world is active to me, including rather than excluding me. My in-between moments used to hang like an old woman’s breasts. Now much more time full of nourishing thoughts bless me. I am in awe.
My patient came in sighing deeply. He wasn’t better. No, he said. He lacked motivation and interest and connection from the world. He felt selected out to suffer. A dumping ground for misfortune and misunderstood. Efforts through medication, after medication changes were like looking for love in all the wrong places.
We talked about cognitive distortions, tapping into things that used to make him happy, road-blocks in poorly designed neurological grooves – volunteering at the library or animal shelter, journaling, sharing his life story with others, exploring his spirituality. No. No good. Nor could he consider psychotherapy as he’d been through too much of it already to consider it again. And he just couldn’t get interested in groups such as through NAMI.
His brain, assaulted by stressors, disease, and disuse was growing silent.
Being a friend means yelling, fighting to reclaim your journey, finding something to connect you to your process of life. My patient was letting squatters take his property simply by being absent.
Self Care Tip #60 – Claim your right to health. Be a friend to yourself.
Question: What has helped you connect with your own journey in life? What do you think? Please tell me your story.
Critical question. Some may see it as not being “selected in”. How did it turn out for the patient? Looks like not many options remained for him.
Sympathetic moments with others suffering and realization of how delicate the condition of being human is are the moments when I am most connected.
Pt remains much the same. Almost all those options remain for pt. However, we don’t always have innumerable chances…
thank u for sharing the empathy. always nice to b around. definitely feel it from u richard! u r a warm fuzzy for anyone! keep on!
I really feel concern for your patient…it sounds like he is in a really difficult place. I actually have a friend from high school who has built his identity out of his perpetual suffering, and so I really connect to your description of this patient. I hope your patient is able to find some light…
Although there are many aspects of having children that have made me feel more creative, connected, in tune with my emotions, and simultaneously more humble and more competent, I COMPLETELY relate to your idea of sensory overload. I have been working through ways of managing being overstimulated now that I have two. With two, rarely is there a break: even sleep—a time to repair and recharge and have quiet time–is more elusive in these newborn months. It does help that my second is much more of a self-soother than my first (we’re still working on that with my first, actually). It has also helped that I have known for a very long time that I am prone to feeling overstimulated, and that I prepared myself for that feeling before my second was born. One of the biggest aids for me in keeping positive is keeping perspective: children are gifts, and they are little/newborn for such a poignantly short time. If I can just soldier-on for a few months, I know it will get easier. Well, not easier…but the challenges for me as a mother will change and some of the sleep will return. I hope!! 🙂
I give totally “props” to mothers with more than two children!! How do you do it?!
Hello Sarah! Thank you for your comments!
As said by kelly oxford
“I feel the most peace when someone else is screwing up.” I think that why M’s like me are so often honking about how messed up we get! I’m here for you!
Kelly Oxford obviously wasn’t the 1st to come up with this great human feature of course. We’ve heard of Schadenfreude – pleasure from someone else’s pain! Anyways, truth is, many of us have that darn sensory sensitivity thing going causing us pain and at least we can laugh about it! Keep on friend!